


In So Many Pieces (I Have Shattered)

by flipflop_diva



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mention Bellatrix Black, Mention Cygnus Black, Mention Narcissa Malfoy, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Spanning canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3818827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she looked back on it from the perspective of time, Druella Black really thought she should have known what she was getting, but as every mum does, she only saw what she wanted to see.</p>
<p>This is the story of Druella Black and her daughter Andromeda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In So Many Pieces (I Have Shattered)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etoilecourageuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoilecourageuse/gifts).



> To my dearest Avi, I know this may not be your headcanon, but I hope you enjoy it. Also, I hope you know I love you as much as Ella loves Andy <33333

The baby was born on a Tuesday night, two months too early, and scaring her parents half to death. Her father summoned the healers to the estate in desperation as soon as the pains that were too intense to be false began, willing them the entire time to hurry, hurry, please just hurry, because something was wrong, something was so very wrong. Her mother moaned in pain and begged the healers to please just save her child, her darling precious child, even if it was at her own expense, and told the housekeepers to keep Bella, her beautiful eldest daughter, out of sight and not let her know what was happening.

It went on this way for hours, everyone fearing the worst, caught between wanting to cry and wanting to scream and not actually doing either, but in the end, it was the baby who came out screaming, already loud and opinionated at exactly zero seconds old.

Years before, when Bella had been born, she hadn’t opened her eyes for hours, making her parents wait in anticipation, but this little girl, this new precious little girl, opened her eyes just minutes after her arrival, her dark eyes already curious and alert and focused on her mum. (The healers would tell Ella that no newborn can see or be alert in the first few minutes of life, that it was just a reaction and nothing more, but Ella knew better.)

Ella thought later she should have known from that first moment how all of this was going to go.

•••

Ella didn’t have favorites, no, not at all. She loved all three of her girls — all of them so different and yet in other ways so similar. All of them so loving, so headstrong, so stubborn (so like their mother, Cygnus would always say, just a hint of a smile on his face). But whereas Bella was intense and passionate and Cissy was like Ella’s little shadow, copying her mum’s every move, right down to the poise and class of a pureblood lady, Andy was independent and resourceful. She loved to argue the hows and the whys of everything and she didn’t care about what she was and was not supposed to do. It was not just once in her life (or, for that matter, often not even just once a day) that her father had to scold her for stomping her foot after they told her something she didn’t like.

Thus it should have been no surprise to any of them then that when Andy fell in love, she fell hard. Ella knew she had fallen the day she met this mystery boy, could tell by the way her eyes lit up, bright and wide, and the way her voice lilted when she talked about him and how she had met him and what every word he had said to her had been, and it made Ella’s heart feel light and whole. There was nothing more in this world that she wanted than for her daughters to love and to be loved. To be happy.

She didn’t know who this mystery boy was until much later, when it was much too late. She would never forget the shock she felt when it slipped from her daughter’s lips — Ella thought her heart would stop, could feel its beat thudding in her head, felt the blood drain slowly out of her body. Time seemed to stop, and everything light and whole inside her turned dark and broken in an instant.

“No,” she cried out in horror when she heard, too distraught and too stunned to keep the emotions in check like she normally did. “You know this cannot happen! You cannot be with a mudblood!”

But Andromeda — not Andy. Her Andy would not defy her like this, would not betray her like this — held her ground, those wide dark eyes flashing in indignation. “It is not your choice who I love,” she said, and she was unwavering, her chin raised, her eyes held on her mother’s.

“But it is our choice,” Ella said, and the horror from her tone had vanished, now replaced with the calm coolness of a mother who will not tolerate any disobedience from her child. “You will not speak to him nor of him, nor will you see him ever again. Andromeda, that is an order. You will not betray this family or bring disrespect to us all with your choices. I will not allow it.” 

She waved her hand dismissively at her daughter. “Now out of my sight. I do not wish to lay eyes on you for the rest of the day.”

Andromeda glared at her, looked as if to protest, mouth already open with words she wished to speak, but instead, she spun around, dark hair flying, feet stomping, as she retreated, shoulders slumped under the weight of her mother’s words.

Ella never saw her in her house again. 

In the morning, Andromeda was gone.

•••

As far as the wizarding world and pureblood society were concerned, Andromeda Black ceased to exist the day she disappeared. Her father refused to talk about her or even mention her name. So did her eldest sister. To them, she might as well have never been born. They turned off their affections and their memories as easily as turning off a faucet, because it was the only way they knew they could carry on. They were proud and loyal, and they could not risk anything that made them seem less so.

Cissy wasn’t quite as cold-hearted toward her sister, but then she was the one, apart from Ella, who loved her most of all. Cissy and Andy had spent hours huddled together, talking and laughing and playing, never thinking there would be a day where they would be separated — especially not separated by one sister’s choice. Andromeda’s betrayal broke her younger sister’s heart, but Cissy was too proud and too stoic to show that it bothered her. She saved her tears and her grief for late nights when no one was watching. When the sun rose, so did her composure.

Ella, too, just like the rest of her family, hid her pain and her emotions over her daughter’s betrayal. Ella had been taught her whole life that family and reputation and name mattered most of anything in the world, and she had tried to instill, thought she had instilled, those virtues in her daughters. That she had failed, that her one child had run off with a Muggle-born of all people, that her daughter would willingly betray them and disgrace them all so broke her heart.

But Ella, as hard as she tried, could not erase all memory and love of her middle child from her mind nor from her heart. The memories would come back when she least wanted them to, in her dreams or in quiet moments or in looking into the eyes of her other children or, most often, in looking into the eyes of her husband.

She surreptitiously kept an eye on news of Andromeda, discreetly paid attention to whispered rumors, subtly read articles in the Daily Prophet and other less reputable publications. She knew that Andromeda had married the boy she had fallen in love with, knew that a short time later she had her own daughter, knew that daughter had grown up and been Sorted into Hufflepuff of all houses. 

She once, when no one was looking, stole away to Hogsmeade, disguised herself as an old woman, and waited patiently in the Three Broomsticks just to get a glimpse of this girl who, in another life, would have been her granddaughter had her mother not betrayed her whole family.

She was not what Ella would have expected, but she knew by just a look that she was Andromeda’s child. Those same alert and curious eyes, the same rebellious streak. She watched the girl’s hair change from blue to purple to pink and tried to remind herself that it was better not having that sort of witch in their family.

She bumped into the girl on the way out of the pub, her desire to leave costing her the ability to pay attention for a quick second, her arm brushing against the arm of this child whose blood ran with her blood. The girl jumped back, looked startled. “Do I know you?” she asked, and her voice sounded all too familiar, brought back far too many memories.

All Ella could do was shake her head. 

“In another life,” she said, and she disapparated before the girl could figure out what she was talking about.

That night she pulled out the old family photo album for the first time in decades, flipped through the pages until she found the one she was looking for, brushed her fingers over the cheeks of the three little girls, all of them under the age of ten, waving to her from the page.

For the first time since Andromeda had disappeared, Ella wished there had been another way, wished that she could go back to that moment when she gave her ultimatum and found another option. 

But there was no other way, had never been any other way, could never be any other way. That she knew. That was the one universal truth in her world.

So she did what she always did. She closed the book of photos, closed the book of memories, and went to bed.

•••

It was hard, ever since she went to lay eyes upon the girl, to keep the memories at bay. It was even harder, after her dear husband was taken from her, to pretend that she had never had a middle child. And it was hardest still, after she lost yet another daughter, this time to the cruel ways of war, to pretend she didn’t miss the one still left alive.

Life in general was hard after the war. The attitudes of other witches and wizards had changed, if only slightly, but Ella could feel it. Judgments where there didn’t use to be any, pointed looks from those she once might have thought were friends. As if she were the only person who had sided with Voldemort, with the Death Eaters. As if she had even sided with them at all. All she had done was what she had always done — sided with those she loved, sided with those she cared about — and all she could do was stand on the sidelines as she lost them one by one. Andromeda, then Cygnus, then Bella.

She didn’t learn about the girl until months after it happened. Her grief over Bella had been too much to contain — even if Bella had long since ago ceased to be the girl she once knew, had become almost a caricature of herself by the end. She was still her daughter, her precious beautiful daughter. And her death had been another dagger in Ella’s heart, had punctured her restraint and her control, and she had locked herself in her house, let no one in, not even Cissy, until she knew the flood of grief had receded.

It was only then that she managed to look at the news, to read some of the articles, to try and ascertain what was happening in the world. And that is when she learned the truth.

The girl. Murdered. Andromeda’s husband. Murdered. Both of them gone, lost.

Somewhere deep inside, Ella felt a pang, an ache. Perhaps of empathy for the woman she once called her daughter. Perhaps a tinge of regret for never knowing what could have been.

She read about the baby, too, her great-grandson. Alive, and with Andromeda. Her blood in his tiny body, Cygnus’s blood in his tiny body, _Andromeda’s_ blood and spirit in his tiny body.

She pushed the article away, mere seconds after the words sank in, but the words wouldn’t leave her, haunted her every moment of the day. There had been no photo, only text, but yet she couldn’t help picturing the baby, picturing Andomeda as she held him, comforted him, _loved_ him.

Finally she could stand it no longer. She slipped out of her home, keeping to the shadows, waiting until she was far away from any prying eyes of housekeepers or gardeners. She knew just where to go, had found the information ages ago.

She apparated to a few streets away, began to walk in the direction she knew she needed to travel.

She hadn’t gone far, though — so much less a distance that she had intended — when she saw them. They were across the street. A woman, a small boy in her arms.

Ella gasped, felt her heart clench.

She looked _so_ different. Older, wiser. Her hair so much grayer than the dark brown it used to be. Her face more hardened. But her eyes … even with a street separating them, she could tell her eyes were the same. Still alert, still curious.

Andromeda.

No. _Andy._

Ella drew back into the shadows, held her breath, watched Andy with her grandson. Watched her smile and laugh as the baby gurgled. Watched her stroke his little head with her soft hand.

Andy. Her daughter. Her beautiful, beautiful daughter. So close. Just a few footsteps away ….

All she’d have to do was cross the street, raise a hand, show a smile, maybe offer a word of greeting …. It would be so easy, it would take so little time …

Across the street, Andy began walking again, continuing on in the direction she had been going. She didn’t see Ella, didn’t even look over.

Ella watched her go, closed her eyes when she finally disappeared from view, disapparated home with an ache in her heart.

She opened the photo album again that night, stared at the photo of the three little girls waving to her.

“Maybe,” she murmured to herself, as she put it away hours later, “maybe we can have this again someday.”

That night she dreamt of Andy and the baby. That night she dreamt of Cygnus and Bella alive. That night she dreamt of her daughters, all three smiling and laughing and hugging.

In the morning she woke to the sound of silence and an empty house.

In the morning she told herself this was how it had to be and it was better this way.

In the morning, she pressed her wand to her temple and made herself forget.


End file.
